Book Review: The Touch by Randall Wallace

Screenwriter and director Randall Wallace (Braveheart, Secretariat) will release his latest book, The Touch, on September 1, 2011 (Tyndale, $14.99)

Wallace, who painted the canvas broadly and boldly when he penned the screenplays for Braveheart, The Man in the Iron Mask, Pearl Harbor, and We Were Soldiers, has changed to a brush with a softer bristle in writing The Touch.

The story revolves around Andrew Jones, a uniquely talented young surgeon. Unfortunately, Jones' talents are tangled in a web of emotions that have limited him to practicing medicine only when it can be handled outside of an operating room.

Lara Blair's bio-medical engineering firm has developed a cutting-edge surgical tool to assist doctors in the most delicate, and invasive, of operating procedures. Despite her best efforts, the machine has yet to be successfully tested in the most critical of circumstances.

Believing Jones to be the surgeon capable of effectively using the device, she sets out to persuade him to return to surgery. While her recruitment efforts meet with a hearty resistance, the two discover a friendship that leads to the exorcism of long-held secrets and fears.

While the plot line is firmly embedded in the strong main characters, the story of The Touch snakes and bends as much as the old Virginia road on which Jones frequently travels. Wallace introduces us to a rich supporting cast which includes a couple of crotchety old men (one based on Wallace's own uncle), a family struggling to deal with seemingly unalterable circumstances, and a lost love whose short appearance impacts nearly every chapter.

Wallace's craftsmanship with words is well proven. In addition to his screenplays, he is a New York Times bestselling author with seven novels on the shelf. Admittedly, The Touch is a deviation from the historically based stories we've come to love and expect from the pen of Randall Wallace. It is not, however, a deviation from Wallace's penchant for storytelling.

The Touch provides compelling insights into human flaws and weaknesses, as well as the resilience of the human spirit, as it reminds us all of the importance of having an enduring bit of Faith in each of our lives.